


From the Light Within Your Eyes

by Sendryl



Series: The Darker The Weather // The Better The Man [8]
Category: Naruto
Genre: (I mean that's basically canon lol), Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Angst, Blood and Gore, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dead People, Did you read the Dead Dove tag? I don't know what else you were expecting then., Eventual Ghost Sex, Ghost Uchiha Obito, KakaObi Week 2020, KakaObi Week 2020 Day 8: Ghosts, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Reluctantly Helpful Kakashi, Slow Burn, Spirit Medium Kakashi, Spirit Uchiha Obito
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:02:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22825318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sendryl/pseuds/Sendryl
Summary: Poor mediums. They have to talk to dead people as well as living people.That is WAY too many people.Kakashi just wants a fucking break.And maybe some fucking.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Uchiha Obito
Series: The Darker The Weather // The Better The Man [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1630276
Comments: 5
Kudos: 91
Collections: KakaObi Week 2020





	From the Light Within Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> M for swearing and GORE (and eventually E for sex but we won't be there for a while. ;) )
> 
> Late for KakaObi Week 2020 Day 8: Ghosts
> 
> But you know what? I can’t imagine anything more fitting than being late for KAKAOBI.
> 
> XD
> 
> (I mean maybe faking my own death for twenty years and then posting, but I’ll keep that as a future option, okay?)
> 
> (Also please read the tags, comment if you'd like me to tag or warn more specifically.)

Kakashi just wants a fucking break.

He’s tired. It’s 3 am. And this fucking ghost won’t leave him alone.

“I know you can hear me,” the ghost says, floating over Kakashi as he turns over in bed.

Kakashi pulls the pillow over his head and groans.

“See, you’re responding,” the ghost continues.

(The ghost had showed up a few days earlier, drifting around by the corner of Kakashi’s favorite coffee shop. It looked to be close to Kakashi’s age, and its cause of death was fairly clear.

The ghost’s entire right side was gruesomely crushed, its arm and leg torn roughly away, the limbs missing from its transparent form. The right side of its face hadn’t escaped the butchery either, the back of its jaw shattered, its cheekbone fragmented, its eye socket cracked and visible through ragged remnants of flesh. Its mouth and nose were the only things left untouched by the carnage, and Kakashi’s stomach turned when he imagined just what could’ve caused such injuries.

Kakashi has always been thankful that the only colors left to ghosts were the eerie blue flames that wisped around them and outlined their bodies.

But this one. This ghost was different.)

Normal people can’t see ghosts at all, but Kakashi has been spirit-touched since his birth. He’s always been able to hear their whispers and howls in the quiet hours of the night. His entire life he’s been forced to watch them waver, caught between one plane and the next, only able to move on when their last mortal ties are firmly severed.

He’s never been able to avoid meeting their eyes. There’s a compulsion about it, something beyond his understanding that pulls his gaze to that of the ghosts he comes across. His eyes lock with theirs and suddenly he Sees, he knows their death and pain and tragedy and understands what holds them to the earth. It happens every single time he meets a ghost, and in a big city like Konoha, in his line of work? That’s a lot of ghosts.

(He sincerely regretted ever meeting this ghost’s eye, however.

Eye. Singular. And it was oddly singular, too, because the single eye the ghost had was floating eerily in its crushed eye socket. The other socket, on the uninjured side of its face, was empty.

All that was a bit odd, but not completely out of the norm.

What was truly alarming was that when Kakashi met this ghost’s stare, resigning himself to yet another gruesome Sight, sure to give his nightmares a fresh well of horrors to draw from, he met a single eye with a haunting _blood red_ _glow._

And he Saw _nothing._

As if that wasn’t enough, the ghost had clearly had enough presence of mind to notice him, and drifted after him, and started talking to him, like it was a totally reasonable thing for Kakashi to start talking to thin air in public. Haha. No.)

Most ghosts ignore him as he ignores them, content to lurk around their place of death for a time, or haunt the person who killed them until they receive some kind of justice, or follow their loved ones until they can be reunited. Some ghosts, however, are a little more… Present. Untethered.

Unpredictable.

Like this one that has now _followed him home._

Kakashi doesn’t like this type of ghost at all.

“Why won’t you answer me?” The ghost asks, has been asking for the past several days, and Kakashi is pretty sure it should sound angry. He certainly would if their situations were reversed, if the one living person who could See him was outright ignoring him, but the ghost just sounds defeated.

Kakashi still doesn’t answer, doesn’t move or speak or give any indication that he is anything other than a normal human being. Maybe if he holds out and ignores the ghost for long enough, it will leave. He’s so tired. He’s slept terribly the last few nights, while the ghost has lurked in the corner of his room. He’s already working himself to the bone with Anbu, every case he manages to solve replaced by ten more just like it - his unit isn’t nearly big enough for a city like Konoha - and he’s been successfully ignoring his Sight for years. He doesn’t want to add this ghost’s wispy weight to his shoulders. He doesn’t have much of himself left to give.

“I know you can hear me,” the ghost repeats, almost to itself.

There’s a cold touch to Kakashi’s spine, a feather-light brush of spectral fingers, and it takes everything in him not to pull away or tense for the ice-cold sensation that he knows is coming.

Ghosts can’t hurt him physically, but he can feel when they pass through his body, can feel the chill of their spirit and the icy burn of their violence and rage battering against his own spirit, and that _does_ hurt. It’s only happened a few times, back when he was still trying to use his powers, but it’s not a sensation he could ever forget.

No matter how much he wants to.

He’s honestly surprised that it’s taken the ghost this long, considering how he’s been stonewalling it.

But this ghost doesn’t shove its fist into his back or rake its fingers through his skull or do any of the violent things Kakashi’s expecting. This ghost does something much, much worse.

This ghost _cries._

“Please say you hear me,” the ghost sobs, and Kakashi can hear it sniffling, can feel drops of icy shadow tears dripping onto the back of his head from where the ghost is presumably leaning over him. _“Please?”_ The ghost begs, and Kakashi just _sighs._ There’s no way he can sleep through this. He might as well stop trying.

This ghost clearly isn’t going to leave him alone, and he’s never been able to defend himself against tears anyway. He’s decided. He’ll help. He’s all in now.

_“Fine,”_ Kakashi groans as he rolls over, glaring up at the crying ghost hovering above him. “I can hear you.”

Just because he’s all in, that doesn’t mean he has to be nice about it.

The ghost buries its face in its hand and sobs harder, tears streaming down the smooth side of its face and drifting into the air from it’s lone eye.

“Oh,” it wails, “Thank you! I wasn’t sure, I thought you could see me but then you just walked away, and you wouldn’t answer, and I didn’t know what to do, and-”

“Yes,” Kakashi bites out as he sits up in bed. The ghost goes silent and stares at him through its fingers, but Kakashi can’t bring himself to soften his voice. He’s got work in the morning and he needs to sleep and he’s pretty sure that whatever this ghost wants won’t be solved with a five minute conversation. “I See you. Now what do you want?”

“I need your help!” The ghost cries, and Kakashi has to force himself not to roll his eyes.

“I gathered that,” he grumbles, completely done with the entire day. Screw work tomorrow, he’s calling in sick. There’s no way he’s going to be rested enough to make any progress in his cases after a night like this. “What exactly do you need my help with?”

He’s expecting the ghost to say something about finding its killer, or maybe ask for a necromancer to purify it and send it on, or even just tell him it got lost and needs directions back home. Ghosts can’t exactly plug their address into Google Maps, after all, so they can get even more lost than a living person. A lost ghost is what Kakashi’s hoping for, but he has to admit to himself that this ghost probably isn’t here for that. Judging by the mutilation Kakashi’s been failing to ignore, it died painfully and tragically, and almost definitely wants closure. Or revenge.

It’s been a while, but Kakashi remembers his teacher’s lessons well. He can help this ghost, either by starting to investigate its death or connecting it to any of the necromancers he still keeps in his contacts. He’ll help. Especially if it’ll finally let him sleep afterward.

But once again, this ghost proves to be just that little bit stranger than any other apparition Kakashi’s had the displeasure of meeting.

“I don’t know,” the ghost says, fear starting to leech back into its voice, “I can’t remember!”

Kakashi stares blankly at it for a moment, then slumps back down into the pillows.

“You can’t remember what you need help with?” He asks, incredulous. “Then why were you so determined to talk to me?”

The ghost starts crying again, and Kakashi knocks his head back into the wall a couple of times in exasperation.

“I’m sorry,” it says, hurriedly wiping its tears, its lone eye casting a sinister glow across Kakashi’s sheets.

Kakashi surreptitiously shifts his feet away, back into the dark.

“I’m sorry, but you were the only one who could see me,” it says, and suddenly the tears are gone, and the ghost’s ghastly stare bores into Kakashi. He can feel his Sight taking hold, but still no vision of death swamps him. There’s just a sense of connection between the ghost and himself. A feeling that there’s something he has to do.

“I know you can help me,” the ghost continues, and Kakashi’s fully awake now because the ghost’s voice is different, childlike and echoing and eldritch, and the corners of the room are starting to flicker with creeping shadows even darker than the black of night, fathomless depths ringing with the warbling songs of unseen creatures, lurking below the surface of the world.

“What do I call you?” Kakashi asks, watching the rolling darkness, cautious and ready to bolt out of bed the moment those shadows crawling out of the corners start to grab for him. He remembers Minato’s stories and Kushina’s terrifying demonstrations. He hopes he has enough salt in the kitchen to slow whatever this is down.

The dark curls up over the edges of his bed, but just when Kakashi’s ready to make a run for it, the ghost surprises him yet again.

It _smiles._ A bright cheery grin stretching all the way across its face, whatever shattered its jaw having missed its mouth entirely.

“Obito,” it says - _he_ says, offering his hand, and after a moment’s contemplation Kakashi reaches out to grasp it. The ghost gave him his true name, Kakashi can feel it, and as soon as Obito smiled the shadows vanished as if they’d never been there in the first place. The least he can do is accept Obito’s hand.

Unpracticed at shaking with his left hand, his hand passes partway through Obito’s and he shivers at the bite of cold, but Obito just tilts his head in concentration before carefully pulling back until their palms are just barely brushing, fingers and thumbs held awkwardly in position. Then he slowly moves his hand up and down, prompting Kakashi to follow his lead in the weirdest handshake he’s ever been given.

The agreement between them sparks a connection, a ghostly light painting their hands in cold fire for a long moment, and when Kakashi draws his hand back he feels different.

It’s nothing evil, or even slightly malicious, because his wards are completely calm, but there’s a new warmth in Kakashi’s mind, a tentative call that he can choose to accept or reject. He hasn’t felt anything like this before, but he still remembers how Rin described it to him. A connection of the spirit, meant to strengthen and guide and temporarily bind. All he has to do is offer his name in return, and Obito will be tethered to him until his spirit can be released to the Pure Land.

It’s not a connection that he’d ever thought he’d have, not after rejecting his Sight for so long, but it’s also not one that he can simply ignore and reject out of hand. He drops into the connection, reading Obito’s motives and memories. There’s not much there. Like Obito said, he can’t remember what he needs. He can’t remember much of anything, which is intriguing. The only thing Kakashi can really feel is a strong urge to protect and defend and an overwhelming purity.

Whatever else Obito is, at least he’s not evil.

Kakashi opens his eyes, unsure when he closed them, to see Obito drifting patiently in front of him.

“Kakashi,” he finally offers, and the connection between them solidifies, snapping firmly into place in Kakashi’s mind.

Obito’s smile grows warm, softens at the edges, and Kakashi isn’t sure where to go from here. He’d been expecting rage or pain or at least a clear goal. He hadn’t been expecting a smile. He certainly hadn’t been expecting to feel Obito’s warm approval and thanks in his head.

“What do you want me to do now?” He asks, but Obito glances around the room and shakes his head.

“It’s late,” he says instead, and Kakashi gives him an unimpressed look. If ghosts could blush, Obito would. Kakashi can feel Obito’s embarrassment through their connection.

“I haven’t been behaving myself very well,” Obito admits, scratching the back of his head with a sheepish smile, wincing with his empty eyelid. It’s oddly endearing. In a macabre kind of way. “You need your sleep, I’m sure. I can’t remember anything anyway, and now that you’re going to help me, we can wait until morning.”

“Until morning, how generous,” Kakashi drawls. Might as well out himself as an asshole now, instead of lulling Obito into a false sense of friendship.

Obito glares at him, but the shadows stay where they’re supposed to, so Kakashi counts it as a win.

“I’m trying to be considerate here,” he says, and Kakashi does roll his eyes this time.

“Considerate would’ve been letting me sleep, oh, five hours ago?” He says calmly, knowing how his friends usually get angrier the calmer he acts.

He’s not disappointed.

“I needed your help!” Obito shouts, the cold flames outlining his body glowing brighter with his anger. When Kakashi only hums in response, Obito stifles a shriek of rage. “You’re an asshole!” 

“Guilty as charged,” Kakashi sings out, and he’s watching carefully, but all Obito’s fury does is increase his glow. There’s no crawling shadows, no eldritch voices, nothing for Kakashi to actually fear.

It’s a good sign.

Means their partnership won’t end with Kakashi’s spirit joining Obito’s in death, and avoiding his own death is always a plus in Kakashi’s book.

“Fine,” Obito says, and suddenly he sounds just as tired as Kakashi. “Just, whatever. Whatever I need clearly isn’t important, so you might as well just go to sleep.” He ducks his head down, staring at the sheets below him, and now he sounds sad again.

Kakashi sighs. He’s an asshole, sure, but he doesn’t exactly want to _feel_ like one.

“Look, I work with the police,” he offers, and Obito lifts his head, his eye suspiciously shiny. The skin under his empty eyelid is wet. “If someone’s found your body, or if you’ve been reported missing, I can probably find that information. That’s probably why you were drawn to me.”

It’s the only reason Kakashi can think of for Obito to be drawn to _him_ of all people, instead of any of Konoha’s necromancers or oracles or any number of other spiritually-inclined people. Kakashi’s just a medium. He can See ghosts and how they died and what holds them to the earth, set wards and purify spaces and people, but he’s not all that powerful in the grand scheme of things.

However, since he can probably find Obito’s body or some way to get him justice when he goes to work tomorrow, it makes sense that Obito would be drawn to him in particular.

So much for calling in sick.

“Maybe,” Obito says, unsure. “It feels like it’s more than that though.”

“More as in…” Kakashi motions for Obito to continue, but Obito just kicks his foot up into the air, floating on his back with his arm laced behind his head.

“I dunno,” he says, incredibly nonchalant for a ghost missing half his body. “Just… _More.”_

“Descriptive,” Kakashi mutters, unimpressed.

Obito laughs at him, smiling as he says, “But that’ll be very helpful, Kakashi. Thank you.”

His mood swings would be odd, but, then again, _ghost._ Their emotions tend to run hot and fast and burn out quickly. Kakashi resigns himself to dealing with an emotional Casper for a few days, and raises an eyebrow.

“Don’t thank me. I haven’t done anything yet.” Kakashi reminds him.

Obito shakes his head with a smile, but doesn’t argue. “Get some sleep, Kakashi. It’s almost morning already.”

Kakashi wants to keep grumbling, point out exactly whose fault that is, but Obito closes his eye, and for all intents and purposes, _falls asleep._ Kakashi’s never seen a ghost do that before.

As he’s thought since he met him, Obito is very strange.

He settles down under the covers, fluffing his pillow back into shape before relaxing as fully as he can.

His sense of Obito in the back of his mind is quiet now, warm and drowsy, and poking at it makes Kakashi yawn. He’s pretty sure he should find sleeping impossible with a ghost in his room, but oddly enough, watching Obito drift slowly across the ceiling lulls Kakashi straight to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> “a feather-light brush of spectral fingers”
> 
> Almost wrote “spirit fingers”. Pretty sure that would give the wrong tone to the story. XD
> 
> This... This is gonna be a long fic, I'm pretty sure. I only started writing it yesterday and I've already got 4k of notes and future scenes and an outline and... It's gonna be pretty long. Buckle in.
> 
> Also I'll probably swing back and edit this chapter like crazy, so don't worry if things aren't quite matching up.
> 
> I exist in other places on this fanfiction plane of existence!  
> ...Tumblr. I exist as [Sendryl](https://sendryl.tumblr.com) on tumblr and that’s it.
> 
> Fic title is from [ MISSIO - I See You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUDsjB3qbVE). Will I ever change? Probably only after KakaObi Week is over, tbh.
> 
> Comments are a kindness, so please be kind! :)


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